Here Comes 2015 and BTW, Where’s DesktopServer 4.0?

Here Comes 2015 and BTW, Where’s DesktopServer 4.0?

Software That Just Works

Some of the greatest advantages of being a small, agile company is the ability to do things the right way & chart our own course while doing so. From the beginning, the ServerPress team has been committed to utilizing best practices in open source development to create one of the strongest products on the market! In 2011, DesktopServer went from a concept to a successful reality.

Software that just works is the driving motivation behind everything we do at ServerPress. But as much as we can forecast a development timeline, things outside of our control can affect that plan. The most important thing, for us, is that our current customers can just use the software. If our commitment here causes a bit of a delay in our forecasted goals, well, that’s the silver lining of being nimble: our ability to remain focused on our objective instead of hard delivery deadlines. So, when needed, we identified issues, fixed problems, tested the fixes, and pushed those updates. Between November 2013 and October 2014 that amounted to five major updates to version 3.0! But it also amounted to pushing out our timeline for the 4.0 release.

A Successful 2014

It’s 2014 and we believe software should do what it sets out to do. If our software caused our users frustrations, headaches and hassles – we then have failed entirely. With that premise, we sent out a survey a few weeks ago to gather feedback from our users. Were we succeeding? Had we made life better for our customers? What areas needed improvement? What did our users want that we hadn’t identified?

The results were exciting and inspiring for our whole team. Some of the highlights:

Many said in the comments that you use our product simply “because it works.”

Most of you said that you’ve never had to take advantage of our customer support (because the software just works).

And, those of you that have had to contact us for support, overwhelmingly stated your experience with our support team as very positive and only increased your confidence in both our product and commitment to taking care of our end users.

Thank you for this feedback! Your successful use of our product is what we stand for. While we weren’t able to launch 4.0 as originally anticipated, THANK YOU for making 2014 a huge success! You are our biggest asset and we remain focused on creating software that just works!

Looking Forward: 2015 Growth

This next year is going to be an exciting year for the ServerPress team. There will be a few more updates to 3.x during the early part of 2015 but our goal is to be 100% focused on 4.0 development by March 1st! DesktopServer 4.0 is a complete departure architecturally from its predecessor (meaning a complete rewrite from the ground up – see bullet points below). While we could have pushed 4.0 out the door, it would have not lived up to our company standard. We would not have had the time to extensively test the product and we would have failed in our mission to create software that just works!

On that note, it became abundantly clear in 2014 that it is time to expand our team! We are planning to bring on some additional talent in early 2015 in order to successfully deliver 4.0 while having enough hands on deck to insure we are readily available to support our current users. We are very grateful for our customers who have made 2014 such a success, and we’re looking forward to a wonderful year of growth in 2015!

ServerPress 2015 Forecasted Goals

3.x updates by end of February to address issues that are currently being tested.

A new website!

fresh design

easy to find content

better account access.

Alternate payment options beyond PayPal

An affiliate program (at last!)

Plugin architecture that will allow for you to make DesktopServer do what YOU want or simply need it to do.

A premium plugin repo for developers to extend DesktopServer and sell their child plugins through our site.

And finally… here’s what is in store for DesktopServer 4.0!

The new version has already been completely built as a WordPress application and will be easier and faster to update when needed.

As the Founder of ServerPress, LLC and the Coding Genius behind DesktopServer, Stephen J. Carnam continues to invent new ways to improve developer Workflow through technology. As a huge Advocate of Open Source Software, he promotes Creativity, Community and Collaboration.